Scents & Sensibility

Here are 4 more randomly-selected perfume recipes from the Essense recipe vault. Taken from over 45 years of Essense history. These are very real, exquisite fragrances created by actual customers!

This unnamed perfume was created way back at the Edgartown store in the 1980’s, which was a very busy, bustling time for Essense. Visiting Martha's Vineyard from New Jersey, this customer loved classic TEA ROSE, a lighter and sweeter version of the classic ROSE. Half this perfume is TEA ROSE and the second-half is divided 2/3 to 1/3 ratio of equally classic but very heady GARDENIA to APRICOT. The APRICOT top-note gives this perfume a fruity-fling of warmth, allure, and youthful playfulness.

A smaller percentage of Essense customers are male, but when they make themselves a signature scent, it’s usually a big hit with those important people in their lives! This gentlemen named Joe, created a terrifically refreshing scent for himself featuring BERGAMOT, which is the mesmerizing citrus scent widely recognized in Earl Grey Tea. He chose one of the Essense tree resins called AMBER #1 for his base-note, comprising 2/3rd’s of this scent. Essense has many AMBERS, all which add soothing, smooth undertones to any other fragrances notes layered on top. AMBERS are considered beneficial for emotional healing and for the heart chakras. Joe included TUNISIAN HONEY in his signature scent, which adds significant "edible" sweetness, without detracting from the fresh masculine quality.

This is one of the “funniest” perfume projects I can recollect, in all my 26 years of perfumery. During the Essense of Martha’s Vineyard Oak Bluff years, this long-time married woman came to me to help her make a perfume that would “get rid of her husband!” I guess he liked her TOO much! She said she was “sick of him!” Oh my! We had lots of fun concocting her this potent “man repellent.” In the end, however, I think it smelled pretty darn good, so I’m not sure it had the desired effect? I reasoned that if we used an “alpha-male” perfume, like MICHAEL JORDAN’s designer-type, perhaps it would be effective in deterring unwanted male attention. The MICHAEL JORDAN fragrance is superb ~ but it smells very different on a woman than on a man! We also added PUMPKIN PIE SPICES & LAVENDER, trademarked by Essense. This is a blend of many things that men presumably prefer in "blind" smell tests, but generally worn by men, rather than women. This customer chose TUNISIAN OPIUM for her base-note, which is really "uni-sex," though the scent changes to powdery-softness on many females and something much spicier on males. Unfortunately for this attractive lady, the TUNISIAN OPIUM which she really liked, is also the sexiest perfume in the entire Essense arsenal. Ever since that day, I’ve wondered what the results were when this lady went home, and applied her perfume! Don’t you?

This scent was created during the first season that Essense reopened as Essense Parfumerie in NH. This is a fabulously simple “2-oil mix” that our customer named “Memories.” 1/3rd is the Essense classic, sexy, but slightly mysterious CHINA MOON which is a blend of ever-popular CHINA MUSK with various JASMINES. The remaining 2/3rds of this signature scent is the newest version of PATCHOULI at Essense, called PATCHOULI FLOWER. It's so hypnotic! It has the same earthy quality, reminiscent of the 1960’s, but it’s much lighter and more modern. I know a certain husband who says he'll "take a gallon" of this PATCHOULI! I love this perfume! I guess I love them all, but I really love this one!

Essense wishes to share various perfume recipes culled from 4 decades of Essense history. The names of the customers have been omitted to protect privacy. Each month 4 more "secret" recipes will be revealed!

This Dennisport, MA customer created a perfume we could call “ARABIAN ROSE-VANILLA.” Some customers don’t name their perfumes, but I recommend that you do! It’s a bonding aspect of creating the “signature” in your signature scent. Of the various ROSE perfume oils available at Essense, the ARABIAN ROSE used here is the lightest and most delicate. Some people have difficulty smelling it because it is so light, but for those who can smell it, it’s nearly ethereal.

In the late 1990’s, a woman from Shrewsbury, MA decided to name her new perfume “STARDUST.” This was a magical and busy time for Essense of Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard. The FRENCH VANILLA used in this blend has a creamier, sweeter, smoother but perhaps smokier scent than the regular VANILLA. This CHINA MUSK is the original, now classic version, created and trademarked way back in 1960’s Berkeley, CA by a successful perfumer. It’s called CHINA MUSK because MUSK was originally extracted from the scent glands of cute little deer that lived in China. Today these deer are protected and this extraction is illegal. All MUSK used legally in the United States today is created synthetically in perfume laboratories. MUSK is one of the most common and essential “base notes” used in world-wide perfumery.

This Bloomfield, CT customer came to the newly built Essense in Oak Bluffs, between 2001-2011. She mixed-up a perfume named “SWEET MUSK,” a simple 2-oil blend using snappy green floral SWEET PEA and exotic but fresh EGYPTIAN MUSK. Some health food stores sell a popular roll-on perfume oil called “Egyptian Goddess,” which uses EGYPTIAN MUSK along with some flowery notes.

After Essense reopened just outside Meredith Village, alongside Lake Waukewan and Lake Winnipesaukee, customers have traded their Atlantic ferry rides with the Steamship Authority for scenic drives among the lakes and mountains of central NH. Here is a custom-blended perfume dubbed “VELVET BULLDOZER!” This customer lives nearby and she asked me to name her new perfume. VELVET BULLDOZER is what an old Chicago Bluesman nicknamed me “back in the day,” when I still lived in Chicago; so I’ve played it forward. It denotes an “iron lady” concept; akin to Theodore Roosevelt’s idea of "speak softly and carry a big stick.” For this perfume, the imported EGYPTIAN TUBEROSE offers mysterious floral intrigue, while CHINA RAIN adds the trademarked blend of both CHINA MUSK and additional pleasing flowers, all universally desired in classic perfumes.

“I deeply regret any harm I have caused by the reallocation of my Essense customers' assets,” confesses a remorseful Ruggles, the CCO (Chief Canine Officer). “These were particularly gracious and lovely customers,” admits Ruggles, “and I never should have reallocated their valuable resources to myself while nobody was looking.”The Essense CCO of just over 3 years goes on to explain “that bacon cream cheese bagel hiding in that beautiful woman’s purse smelled even more scrumptious than any perfume my customers were creating in the Essense Parfumerie.”

the evidence

It seems the highest officer of the company stole the wrapped bacon-cream cheese bagel right out an unsuspecting customer's purse last Saturday night while she and her sisters sat at the Essense Apothecary Perfume Bar, creating some fabulous and exotically extraordinary fragrances, which can sometimes take an hour or two. The attractive teal-colored purse was left open and unguarded on the oriental-carpeted maple floor in the Essense Barn. Fortunately, no other items, including wallet, phone or car keys were absconded with. The only reallocated asset appeared to be a half-eaten bagel, entirely devoid of it’s bacon-cream cheese filling. The remains of the missing bagel were found later, not far from the couch, the sight of the original bungled bagel-burglary.

The fun-loving Essense customers took quite a liking to Ruggles, the Essense CCO. In fact, they commended him on his acute powers of observation, his keen sense of smell, and his due diligence in uncovering such a delicious snack, hidden away for later consumption. “He worked very hard in unwrapping and reallocating that bagel,” the customers’ guffawed. They will not be pressing charges, and Essense hopes that Ruggles the CCO, will be more observant of corporate rules and regulations in the future.

When questioned for further explanation on his behavior, Ruggles asks with incredulity, “Have you forgotten I’m a rescue-poodle from Providence’s Smith Hill, and I survived my childhood by foraging bits of bagel and donuts from the bags and wrappings left in a nearby Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot? Besides, it's my belief that friends buy you lunch, but BEST friends, eat your lunch!"

Tamsan Lee Beattie at the apothecary style perfume bar she has built in the barn at her home, Rock Ridge Farm. Photo by Brendan Smith

The front page of the May 19th, 2016 issue of The Weirs Times carried an article titled Historic New Hampton Homestead is Setting for an Age-Old Craft, by Brendan Smith, who also took the photographs. We reprint it here courtesy of The Weirs Times. The whole issue may be viewed online here.

Rock Ridge Farm. Photo by Tamsan Lee Beattie

Rock Ridge Farm in New Hampton has a long, storied history.

Once the apple and dairy farm homestead of Moses Smith, who built the Farm in 1796 after being gifted the land by his father, it was later the home of Charles Warren Robie, who made his money in the railroad and bought Rock Ridge in 1910 to live again near his birth roots. It was considered, at the time, one of the most attractive summer homes around the lakes. In more recent history it had been a horse farm, summer ballet camp for girls, and the location of numerous antique shops.

In 2009, Rock Ridge Farm was bought by Tamsan Lee Beattie, who today runs Essense Parfumerie from the historic homestead, one of only maybe a couple hundred such custom-blending perfume shops in the world.

“People have been using perfume for at least 4,000 years,” said Tamsan. “It used to always be a custom made experience. It was in the 1920s that the fashion industry high-jacked perfume when Chanel No. 5 came out. They used synthetics to create the earliest modern mass market for perfume.”Tamsan bought the perfume business in 1990 on Martha’s Vineyard. She was to be the third owner of this unique enterprise which originally started as “Body Scents” in Woodstock, NY in 1970.

Tamsan mixing scents. Photo by Brendan Smith

I had done some perfume making as a hobby when I lived in the Twin Cities,” said Tamsan. “Even though I had a Master’s Degree in Behavioral Science, I was still drawn to the perfume. I guess you can say I can make you perfume and fix your brain.”

In 2009, Tamsan went on the hunt for a new place to live and run her business. “I had lived in all the big cities like Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Minneapolis, St. Paul, San Francisco, Manhattan,” said Tamsan. “I was done with cities.”

Tamsan went searching through nine states, looking for the perfect non-city location, until she came across Rock Ridge Farm. “I had lived in Concord from ages two to seven when my father was a Unitarian Minister there,” said Tamsan. “I also had family still there at the time that I wanted to be close to.”

Tamsan moved back and forth between Martha’s Vineyard and New Hampton as she was selling her home and business there and working to get organized in her new place in New Hampshire. With some renovations to the barn area, which included walling in an area to create a climate controlled apothecary style perfume room, Tamsan was ready to bring her rare profession to the Lakes Region.

Photo by Brendan Smith

The walls of the perfume room are lined with five hundred and fifty “fragrance composites.” All natural oils that when combined together by someone with an expertise in the artistry of perfuming, will create a scent that will be particular to the person it is created for.“Today mass-marketed perfumes are about 97 percent alcohol and water and three percent essential oils,” said Tamsan. “The perfumes I create are fragrance composites, blended with 100% essential oils and perfume oils.

When someone visits Tamsan to have her create their own unique perfume, the process can be quick or might take awhile.

“I work at finding the perfect match by asking the customer a series of questions,” said Tamsan. “It helps me understand the personality of the perfume they’re trying to create. It’s important to see and share what customers react to, in smell. Some people know in five minutes, some might come back every day for week.”

As Tamsan points out, this is not something you can do online, although there is an online shopping cart to order “ready-mades.”

“Over the years I have been doing this, Essense has created 22,000 perfumes,” said Tamsan. “Each perfume is like creating a symphony. There are base notes, middle notes and top notes." Tamsan explained that the top note gives the initial scent and fades first, the middle notes appear once the top note is gone and are the heart of the fragrance and the base note is what anchors to your skin and lasts the longest.

Still, it is not as simple as just putting a few oils together. “Everyone has different skin chemistry and different reactions to scent," said Tamsan. “It depends on factors like estrogen and testosterone levels, skin types and age, for example. I spend time with the customer. It takes at least a half-hour to find the perfect scent.”

Tamsan imports her oils from about thirty-five different vendors and has a wildly eclectic selection to use. “When I bought this business there were about one hundred and twenty smells and I have since added over three hundred more,” said Tamsan.

This reporter’s head spun a little as I was shown there were so many different types of one variety. The different varieties of oils from oranges ranged from the fruit itself, to the wood of the tree, to the peel, to the flower. And oranges vary from country to country, even within this country.

“The same plant can give you so many options. You can eat or make perfumes out of the different parts of plants,” said Tamsan. “I memorize the different combinations like you would memorize words and then make a new sentence each time, by rearranging them.” The oils are kept in antique bottles which Tamsan has collected over the years and as well as old science surplus bottles she has purchased.

Each scent “recipe” is kept in a box for Tamsan to keep on file. You can name your own scent really giving it that individuality.

“Great perfume, like great art, great poetry, great music, or a greatly assembled outfit, can alter the way we see the world as well as the way others see us,” said Tamsan. It’s not just a matter of confidence; the innate response to scents that are beautiful and subtle is generally appreciative, either consciously or unconsciously, thus changing the way the wearer responds to the world and vice versa. It’s a fact recently confirmed by scientific methods that a “good-smelling” person is subjectively perceived by others to be more attractive, more likable, and younger, (So forget the plastic surgery!) It is also a biological, physiological fact that scents, via our sense of smell, vividly connect us both to our memory banks and to our natural world. More than any of the other human senses, our sense of smell is the most direct link to the collective and individual experience of being a human being on this planet, via the multitude of emotions and perceptions closely allied with scent and memory: delight, awe, dread, fear, fun, wonder, marvel, sentiment, revulsion, melancholy, attraction, and joy, just to name a few…”

Tamsan also does private parties for Bridal Showers, Ladies' Night Out, Chem-Free Graduations and more. Essense Parfumerie is open Memorial Day through Columbus Day weekend Thursday through Saturday from Noon to 6pm. Other evenings and days until 9pm. You can also make an appointment by calling 800-332-6315 or emailing tamsan@essense.com. Rock Ridge Farm is located at 48 Waukewan Road in New Hampton.

Lady Katherine worked at Essense for 3 summers, 1999-2001, while she was in college. Now a hip young adult with her own home in New Orleans, she’s pursued a successful career in marketing. Lady Katherine visited the "new" Essense Parfumerie at Rock Ridge Farm last June. We fondly reminisced about her summers making perfume for Essense customers on Martha's Vineyard. Ruggles & I thought it could be interesting to interview Lady Katherine to reflect on her past Essense experiences and talk about perfume from "the other side of the bar."

Essense: If we define "gestalt" as an organized whole—the summer job being more than the sum of all its parts—how do you remember your summer job as an apprenticing young perfumer at Essense?

Lady Katherine: It didn’t feel like just a summer job. I felt like I had the privilege to go somewhere everyday and create things that had never been created before.

Essense: Walking into Essense today, what fragrance labels/names "called" to you immediately? What scents did you instantaneously gravitate towards, like old friends?

Lady Katherine: Well Gardenia Soft is always THE first. Which is funny, you know, because I have it at home…but I still want to say “hello.” Walking in, and seeing them ALL, it’s like a group of old friends you haven’t seen in a while. It’s like: “Hi everyone…how’ya doing? Oh look…we have some new members.” (Ha, ha.) It’s like my perfume support group.

Essense: How do you think perfume, in terms of the sense of smell, and the art of scent, has translated into the rest of your life?

Lady Katherine: Letting something speak to you viscerally and learning to listen to that is something I can’t imagine I’d have learned anywhere else. Like um… when you’re blending a perfume for somebody, and they know only vaguely what they're "looking" for, but I'd have to navigate the perfume bars, to fill in all the sensory elements, put all the "notes" into a bottle to create an entire perfume, really an entire mood.

I guess making perfume…activated my instincts a little more. It taught me to "go by feel." I fancy myself a good cook for example and when people ask me HOW I cook, I tell them I cook the way I perfume. When making a perfume, I learned how to listen to the bottles talking to me. When I helped customers make a perfume, they could often explain what they wanted, but I learned to translate that into a scent by "listening" to the bottles of scent themselves.

Customers might create a personal fragrance, get maybe like 85%, but that last little piece, that very last note to complete the circle, was still a mystery. It had to be just right, to make the fragrance complete… this is when I would let the scents themselves "talk" to me, almost as if they’d call out. The way I’d describe the feeling is: there’s something missing to make this perfect… what is it? And then, um… Orange Blossom yells out: it’s me, it’s me! (Hahahaha… laughs) I learned to listen to those creative instincts when making perfume, and that was training to be attuned to my own creative instincts in other areas of my life.

Essense was/is TOTALLY unique. There are other places that’ll make ya a bath gel that smells like, uh, you know… peach or over-the-top lilac blossoms. (Haha) But after working at Essense, when I’ve gone into those places, there’s NONE of the MAGIC. Essense IS part magical mood. Other places have none of the science and the art of potion making. Other places might make you feel hurried, like you're in an airport… like, "carry on by!" That's not the way perfumes are made...

In most retail establishments, it’s process versus product. At Essense you get both... an elaborate magical process, to be enjoyed and remembered, and a good product, that smells great, feels great, is for your skin, and fabulously uplifting for your psyche.

Essense: How important is smell, either to you, or to human-kind?

Lady Katherine: Well, for me, smell is VERY important. If somebody smells offensive, then I don’t want tot do business with them, and I certainly don’t want to sleep with them.

Essense: (Hahaha….) Will you elaborate on that, please? What does the smell of another person tell you, either as a perfumer or as a normal person going about your daily life?​Lady Katherine: It has to do with basics of hygiene, but it’s also chemistry. AS in… "does mine work with yours?" And… it can even be like… TRUST. If somebody smells a certain way you’re more prone to trust them.

Essense: Why or how is that? Trust? Is trust linked to smell by memory? Is trust linked to memory?

Lady Katherine: Well, yes…but if you meet somebody with guns all a’blazing in some cheap dollar-store perfume, you’re like “what are you hiding?” Yah…when loud perfume is covering up, or assaulting the room, you wonder “what are you covering up?” It’s like the scentual version of “the loud talker.”

Being a perfumer is sort of like being a bartender. You learn everything about people. You learn their life stories: joy; sadness; sickness; what they’re going through; what brought them (into Essense); why they’re taking this time for luxury? Have they made perfume for themselves, or as a gift? By helping the customers during their perfuming process, you send them away with something that is both uniquely theirs and uniquely yours—as in something that you’ve given to them. And… you can be part of their celebration, like about somebody’s wedding. Or, part of their healing, like a after a big romantic break-up. Or, you can be part of their moving on, to bigger and better things in their own lives.

I remember all the teenaged customers that always wanted their perfume to be “Sexy-Sexy,” or the married ladies who’d been with the same men for decades and wanted perfume to make them feel desirable again. Then there were the newly married honeymooning couples that spent HOURS at the Essense bar, touching and sniffing each other. (Hahahaha) …maybe they needed less help? The time for those experiences is recorded in perfume, and on the perfume recipe cards for perpetuity. Those transitions, or those moments of life are captured, via scent. THOSE people have THOSE memories always. That’s the way I always felt about it… you know.

Essense: What other thoughts would you share with Essense and Essense customers today?

Lady Katherine: You know, you don’t have a whole lot of experiences in life where you’re encouraged to take time and think about yourself. At Essense you sit, and think, and smell; you take time; you wait to see/smell which scents work with your own body chemistry. It’s just SO FUN to make something; it's a chance to describe yourself in a positive, fun, memorable way, with a custom potion that you can wear.

Tamsan & Ruggles

Tamsan is a practicing perfumer of 27 years, as well as a sidewalk social scientist with an actual Master's Degree in Behavioral Science from The University of Chicago. Because the sense of smell is closely linked to memory and emotion, the art and science of perfume is very psychological. Ruggles is also a sidewalk social scientist, a rescue-poodle with dubious urban-feral origins. Abandoned on the streets and left to starve, Ruggles has a Master's Degree from The School of Life, but he's a philosophical-poodle who's maintained a very good sense of humor. Both are relocated from major urban centers. For nearly 50 years, Tamsan lived in the cities of: Chicago, St. Paul, Manhattan, Indianapolis, Berkeley, Cleveland, Minneapolis, Providence, and San Diego. Together, they now blog about life's sensory and fragrant spectacles from more bucolic surroundings. More specifically, Tamsan blogs about olfactory mysteries and miracles; Ruggles prefers to comment on anything edible or odoriferous...

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I love that you take the ancient and the spiritual and put it in a bottle.That is way too cool!I just love these rare and magic things, it doesn’t get better than this.Tamsan is a divine alchemist.—Gretchen B., Bisbee, AZ

ESSENSE PARFUMERIE​AT ROCK RIDGE FARMoutside Meredith Village on the other side of Lake Waukewan a hop and skip from the Snake River PO Box 689 ~ MV, NH 03253

The "Essense Barn," early 1900's

Essense Parfumerieat Rock Ridge Farm

Opening Thursday, May 23rd,for Memorial Day Weekend 2019.Thursday~Saturday, 12-Noon to 6pm.Other days, and early evening hours also available, by appointment only. Closed Sundays & Mondays. Mail-Order All Year.Please call or text 603-409-2799​ to leave a voice-mail or message. Or email: Tamsan@Essense.comcomMail-order is available year-round.